Head coach Tony Pulis and centre half Gareth McAuley have both given their thought following the two one loss to Bournemouth yesterday.
With Pulis giving his thoughts about the penalty award that shouldn’t have been and admitting that for James McClean’s red card on the day he certainly couldn’t argue, wba.co.uk have him quoted as also saying that plans for the day were disrupted ahead of the game with a sickness bug doing the rounds at the training ground – but obviously the performance and being reduced to nine men ultimately didn’t help us.
Chris Brunt, James Morrison and Darren Fletcher were the three main strugglers, and whilst they offered up to play the game, neither saw it through to full time, although Fletcher got the furthest.
‘We started flat but we had four or five players who turned up who had been sick during the night. The doc had them in but they wanted to play given how well things had gone for us last week. It was the three I brought off who weren’t well but they all wanted to play.’
With McClean and Salomon Rondon seeing red during the match, the gaffer went on to say.
‘For the first 20 minutes we looked flat – they were the better team – and obviously the sending off didn’t help. That was a reckless challenge. The disappointing thing for me, is that Smith caught McClean 30 seconds before and McClean didn’t let that go. You can’t condone that but if Mike Dean gives a free kick for the first one then it wouldn’t happen. And the penalty was outside the box. You can’t be giving decisions like that unless you’re absolutely sure. The second red card was crazy. Rondon shouldn’t be doing things like that. We’ve no incling of anything like that – we’ve never seen him react like that.’
As for Northern Ireland international McAuley, he said that given the experience in the side we really should’ve had enough about us to see the game out and take a point.
‘It`s disappointing that after getting back into the game we couldn`t see it out. There wasn`t long to go and we have enough experience in our side to be able to see that out. We should have come away with at least a point. There are a few massive games coming up now against teams who are in the bottom half of the league. We will be looking to get back to winning ways. We will take this one on the chin and go back into work on Monday and start again.’
Vital West Brom on:
Vital West Brom on:
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